White and Red
by Kaleyanne
Summary: Mitarai succumbs to the pressures of life. And death. MitaraixKuwabara.


**White and Red**  
  
The doorknob clicked as Mitarai locked it. Letting a sigh escape his tight chest, he turned around and slumped against the wooden door. It was cold; maybe the coat of paint was making it so. Mitarai didn't know, and really was not interested in finding out.  
  
Kuwabara was out. The blonde quickly checked again, just to be sure. If he had been home, Mitarai would have heard him. Kuwabara was such a big man, every time he took a step, even when he tried to be stealthy, you could hear it. Or sometimes he whistled; Mitarai liked the sweet melodies his lover could come up with on the spot.  
  
Overall, though, Kuwabara was... well... the easiest, best word to describe him was _big_. A big body, a big mouth, big hands and feet, big appetite. He had a taste for big hobbies, too, he could sometimes be caught watching sumo wrestling or something like that.  
  
But the clearest, sharpest object in Kuwabara's big repetoire was his heart.  
  
It never failed to shock Mitarai, when they were out and about. A kitten up a tree, a woman crossing a street, a gang beating up a child... Kuwabara never failed to be there. It was as if he could sense trouble, and hell, maybe he could. It definitely was not outside the realm of possibility. Kuwabara could sense just about everything else...  
  
It made Mitarai feel inadequate. He was not the pure creatue Kuwabara was. Kuwabara was as white as the paint on the door behind him. He was kind, even when he thought the person didn't deserve it. Sure, he could get a little caught up in things and miss the big picture, but that was forgivable. He always made it there in the end.  
  
Mitarai... sometimes he could not understand his Kuwabara's way of thinking. For instance, one day they had been eating ice cream in the park when they came across a Kasanegafuchi student beating up a student from Meiou Academy. Mitarai had recognized the uniform from seeing Kaitou wear it.  
  
Kuwabara had quickly jumped in, and scared the Kasane punk away. The Meiou student had thanked him profusely, before leaving to go finish a chemistry project.  
  
That hadn't bothered Mitarai. He hadn't blinked; that was typical Kazuma Kuwabara, shining through like the sun after the rain. Like the warmth was soaked into a rock.  
  
But the very next week...  
  
One of those horrible, wonderful, ugly, beautiful rainy days. The rain seemed to be closer to ice than water as the couple had hurried home from a visit to Shizuru. Kuwabara had opened his umbrella and was preparing for the lengthy war they always waged when Mitarai refused the protection. Which Kuwabara found ludicrous; cold water is cold water, whether you love it or not. And Mitarai was so easy to fear for, with his tiny frame and slender shoulders. It was easy to imagine him with a cold, or worse, pneumonia.  
  
Mitarai had been gearing himself up for the old argument as well when they heard a splash across the street. Eyes darting to check with the other, they silently agreed to let their curiosities decide, and the umbrella fight was forgotten--if momentarily.  
  
They didn't bother to look, but flew across the street like they were skiing, and searched for the source of the splash. It was a moment or two before Kuwabara called out, "Mitarai!" And the called spun around to see his lover lifting a teenaged boy from a puddle.  
  
Mitarai ran over to him, and stopped short about half a foot.  
  
He recognized the soft shade of hair from the encounter in the park. He remembered the angular face and the sharp, appraising eyes.  
  
He did not remember the rounded, deep purple bruise on the boy's right cheek, or the slash on his chin; thin as thread and still oozing thick red blood.  
  
Kuwabara cradled him carefully, like a baby or a prized stuffed animal. He was murmuring something--it was amazing, the ranges of Kuwabara's voice. Wacky combinations of deep and high for normal use, a deep, serious voice when angry, and a high, girlish voice when surprised or happy.  
  
The deeper voice was being used now, for it's alternative 'lean on me' use. The use Mitarai heard most frequently.  
  
The Kasanegafuchi student whimpered at his unseen injuries being jarred, and Kuwabara locked his gaze with Mitarai's.  
  
"I'm taking him to the hospital," the man said tersely. "Go on ahead home, okay? I'll be there as soon as I can."  
  
Mitarai had just nodded mutely, watching in stunned fascination as Kuwabara put his speed to work to run for the hospital. In his haste, it hadn't even occurred to him to call a taxi or catch a train. Kuwabara could see nothing, Mitarai realized; nothing but the child in pain, nothing but the bruise and the cut, and all of the injuries he hadn't glimpsed, nothing but the hospital looming far in the distance...  
  
It had baffled Mitarai then, and it baffled him now, almost three months later. After witnessing the evil in this boy's soul, Kuwabara had still helped him.  
  
And been dangerously angry and even more depressed the next evening, when he finally came home.  
  
"Hajime Toshimichi, that kid, died this afternoon," he had said in a dull voice, in responde to Mitarai's frantic questions and concerns. "He got roughed up really bad; bled to death, all on the inside."  
  
Mitarai had jumped then, because Kuwabara's fisted slammed straight into the wall... not to mention, straight _through_ it.  
  
"Whoever did it was real pissed, too," he added angrily. "Attempted manual strangulation at first, but it was apparently too slow." He snorted. "As if bleeding to death isn't!"  
  
Stunned, horrified silence followed, on Mitarai's part, and slow, heavy breathing on Kuwabara's. It felt like a short eternity before either of them moved, until...  
  
"I'm going to say a prayer for him," Kuwabara decided all of a sudden. "Maybe his afterlife will be better than this one."  
  
Mitarai had still been shocked.  
  
He was still shocked.  
  
And confused. Kuwabara had seen, before and over again, just how cruel humans could be. And... well, it was a lie to say he didn't care. Kuwabara couldn't 'not' care. He had an opinion on everything, was impartial to nothing.  
  
But... well, it was also lying to say he excused it.  
  
Maybe... maybe the proper word was that he accepted it. Maybe. He certainly didn't embrace it, but he accepted it as a fact of life, and moved on. He accepted it as human nature. And he did what he could against it, but ultimately...  
  
_Aspect._ Aspect of human nature.  
  
It was funny; years later and Sensui still had a heavy effect on how Mitarai thought. Years later, Mitarai still heard Sensui's lectures on the evil of humanity humming in his ear when he saw thefts and murders on the news. Indeed, as that boy, Toshimichi, had hurt the Meiou student, his mind was flooded by a vivid memory of Sensui pausing the Black Chapters video tape on an image of a bloody, grueling duel between...  
  
Between...  
  
Suddenly, he couldn't remember who it was between. Spartans? Gauls? Jutes? Huns? Aztecs? Nazis?  
  
After awhile, the video and the screams and blood and the death and the murder and the sin and the awful, awful laughter just blurred together... like ink writing in the rain, it dripped and blurred until there was nothing left, nothing there, faded, obscure, invisible white.  
  
White _pain_.  
  
White pain, pain so real it was unimaginable. Strange, when real things can't be imagined. Funny and philosophical, too, Mitarai thought. A paradox.  
  
White pain, the pure, unadulterated hurt and ache that was so potent that human nerve endings could not feel just how painful it was. It got to a point where the emotional and physical bodies were exhausted by one or the other... or in some cases, both. For Mitarai, the physical pain had stopped once he met Kuwabara, years ago, and he thought that was probably why he had not come to this conclusion sooner.  
  
He was going to miss Kuwabara. His tough, lovable, funny, caring Kuwabara.  
  
He looked around the pristine white bathroom. Sink, toilet and tub where you would expect them to be. Towels, bleached and smelling like fabric softener, hung on the rack. Mitarai even noticed that Kuwabara had forgotten to put his toothbrush back in the medicine cabinet.  
  
He did it himself. One more inadequate, pointless favor.  
  
The tub. That was the place to do it, he decided. Hot water. Another inadequate favor to Kuwabara: to clean up his mess. He didn't want Kuwabara to spend forever scrubbing his blood up. Kuwabara didn't deserve that. Kuwabara didn't deserve a lot of the things Life had rudely dropped on him.  
  
One of them being Mitarai.  
  
Or maybe it was the other way around. Kuwabara certainly didn't deserve the burden that Mitarai presented, but Mitarai didn't deserve the protection and unconditional love Kuwabara showered him with. He never had, and there was no way he ever would.  
  
He wished Kuwabara would be happy once he went through with it. Kurama had told him once that Kuwabara used to have a crush on a girl named Yukina. A demon girl, who was sweet and innocent and saw the good in everything. Just like Kuwabara. Maybe they could be happy together.  
  
Mitarai swallowed roughly. He had contemplated this course of action many, many times, but he always backed out at the last minute. Either he lost his nerve, or Kuwabara came home before he did it, or something...  
  
Kuwabara wouldn't be home for hours this time. And Mitarai had no more nerves left to lose. He was numb. And that brought him the nagging sensation that the numbness might wear off, and leave him as broken as before. All the worse, because he had experienced a brief reprieve.  
  
He never wanted the numbness to end.  
  
Pale hand shaking like a rattler's tail, he cranked on the water. Warm water. The blood would flow faster, making it quicker, and that way, the blood would go down the drain with the water. Easy. Clean and quick. Less work for Kuwabara.  
  
He kept the drain open, and settled down into the warm water. He had always liked water; it was so refreshing. Cleansing. Peaceful. Relaxing. Sleepy.  
  
So sleepy you may never wake up...  
  
He grabbed his pocketknife and flipped it open, gazing intently at the sharp, shiny blade... Silver as the lining of a cloud, he thought wryly. What a stupid saying that was.  
  
The water was soaking his jeans and working its way into his thin blue button down. It wasn't unpleasant, but it wasn't the best, either.  
  
Taking a deep breath, he laid the blade over his wrist, and made a quick incision.  
  
A bright thread of red blood appeared almost instantly. Mitarai merely blinked. He had seen his own blood far too many times to be shocked or disgusted by it. It was him, all him...  
  
Maybe he should be shocked and disgusted.  
  
But the steadily-thickening line would do him no good. That was child's play, akin to a scraped knee.  
  
The damage, the power, lay in the thick blue vein that could be seen even through the barrier of soft pink skin. The mighty vein that also provided his pulse to his wrist.  
  
The more, the better...  
  
Carefully aligning his knife's edge with the vein (or maybe he was just stalling), he sliced. From his wrist as far as he could go, and he gasped in horror, trying to collect enough oxygen and rational thought to do the other wrist, but the warm sensation of the water below him and the crimson liquid coming from him thwarted all attempts...  
  
The world faded to red.  
  
Then...  
  
White.

...  
  
Kuwabara banged on the bathroom door. "Mitarai?" he yelled. "Mitarai, are you okay? I've been home maybe twenty minutes, and you're still in there..." He trailed off in a weird mix of exasperation and worry. Mitarai was a fairly antisocial, reclusive person, but... Kuwabara had always had a knack for bringing out the best in his lover. The shy, quiet pain hid a shy, quiet strength that Kuwabara adored.  
  
He usually tried to be giving when it came to Mitarai's 'alone' periods. He usually cleared off into whatever room Mitarai was most likely not to hole up in, and waited. Patience was not a virture that Kuwabara possessed, but he usually made an exception for Mitarai.  
  
But this was looking to be the exception of the exception. A deep, wrenching feeling in his gut told him something was wrong... and he'd regret it if he opened the door. Then again, Kuwabara didn't really indulge regret. Fall seven times, get up eight, he said. Regret is for people who have the time to endlessy puzzle over such trivialities. Not Kuwabara.  
  
So he banged again, and he yelled again, and he received no response.  
  
And now he was officially worried. Maybe Mitarai was uncomfortable sometimes, but he never ignored Kuwabara. Never. Not once.  
  
He banged once more. "Mitarai! Answer or I'm breaking down the door!"  
  
He didn't have to.  
  
The white-painted door suddenly slammed Kuwabara with all the gentle subtlety of a freight train, the door knob jammed painfully into his abdomen.  
  
He coughed up a puddle of blood, and smeared it across the pure white door as he shoved it off of him. A streak of pink in the rough shape of his hand remained.  
  
He roughly threw the door into the living room; never mind the damage repairs! Mitarai was Priority One.  
  
Only Mitarai didn't greet him at the door.  
  
Looming a good eight feet above Kuwabara's head, a bluish creature -- almost transparent, and appearing to have a liquid base -- snarled viciously at the redhead.  
  
A very familiar blue liquid creature...  
  
Kuwabara gasped in horror as he spotted Mitarai lying still in the tub, water still cascading around him. Kuwabara immediately decided to abandon any thought of combat with the monster, in favor of getting Mitarai to a hospital. Or better yet, to a healer. Or, he thought desperately, even Kurama's medicinal herbs, if he's okay, please let him be...  
  
He paid no mind as he ducked under and around the liquid monster's bulky form to get into the bathroom, and to get to Mitarai. And the monster returned the favor; he growled and ran out of the bathroom once Kuwabara had passed him, and into the living room.  
  
Faintly, Kuwabara heard the monster break down their front door. Faintly, he heard a woman scream and a child cry. Faintly, he heard the tell-tale sounds of smashing cement and falling Sheetrock; tell-tale signs that a fight, a massacre, was taking place.  
  
Faintly, because he was screaming Mitarai's name.  
  
Faintly, because Mitarai would not respond.  
  
(End.)  
  
This ended up being one of those fics that more or less wrote themselves, and it emotionally drained me.  
  
It came out with a lot more Kuwabara than I expected. But that's okay.  
  
Uh, if you see any plotholes (I can think of one reallyreally obvious one that just now occurred to me), ignore them. Heh. Three people have already read it, and they didn't notice it, so...


End file.
